The Public Theology We Need Now

Moral compromise is far too common, but we know a better way.

In the spring of 1933, while the world faced rising authoritarian movements, Franz von Papen traveled to Rome as a delegate of Germany’s new Chancellor. There he began negotiations for an agreement between the Vatican and the German Reich – a Concordant both parties would sign that summer, preparing the way for Hitler’s regime to advance its agenda for the next dozen years without mass resistance from German Christians. The details of the agreement were spelled out in several pages, but the structure was simple, and largely reflected how most Catholic and Protestant churches would negotiate the Third Reich: churches would be free to worship, run schools, and conduct social services as long as their preachers stayed out of politics.

The pastoral ministries of the Church could continue if it silenced its prophetic critique.

When the US President threatened genocide on social media this week, Pope, Leo XIV - the first American Pope - told reporters, “This truly is not acceptable.” He encouraged US citizens to call their representatives in Congress and demand a check on the President’s war powers. This was not the first time Leo (or Pope Francis before him) challenged Trump’s agenda, but it was remarkably direct.

In the wake of Leo’s challenge, the Free Press reported on a meeting at the Pentagon earlier this year where the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States had been called in for a meeting and apparently upbraided for challenges much less direct than the Pope’s comments to reporters this week. While some of the reporting was not confirmed by the Vatican or the Pentagon, no one denied that the meeting was requested and there was a tense exchange. This much is clear: Trump’s regime would prefer an agreement along the lines of the German Reich’s 1933 Concordant.

The central question of public theology is always what God requires of us, no matter who is in charge. Throughout history clergy have been accused of being “too political” in times and places where political leaders did not want to have to deal with the challenge our moral traditions offer. The compromise that Trump demands today and that German Christians agreed to in 1933 has been made far too often in human history. It was the basic agreement between white churches and the Jim Crow regime in the American South, between church leaders and the Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century, and between many governments and church institutions in between.

But this is not the only story of public theology that we have inherited. Two years before von Papen traveled to Rome to meet with Vatican officials in 1933, a handful of clergy, scholars, and activists traveled to New Haven, Connecticut at the invitation of seven African-American students at Yale Divinity School who had dedicated themselves to “service and sacrifice for Christ.” The students were concerned about the authoritarian movements of their day, both in Europe and in the American South. They also knew God had called them to become leaders in the church who could work together for “the creation of a new social order based on the principles of Jesus.”

Not content to simply wait for their theological school to equip them for this moral leadership, they called on a young scholar from Howard University (Benjamin Mays), a young labor organizer (A. Philip Randolph), a couple of preachers who had built large churches in New York City and Atlanta, and a couple of PhD’s who would go on to lead HBCUs over the next few decades. Only one of their professors, Jerome Davis, helped facilitate the gathering. For a few days, the small group reflected together on this question: how could they practice the militant nonviolent love of Jesus in a way that would bring down Jim Crow? They recorded their resolutions in a document they titled, “Whither the Negro Church?,” then they set about building institutions that could operationalize their vision.

Just five years later, one of those seven students and his spouse traveled with Howard and Sue Bailey Thurman to India, where they met Gandhi and continued the discussion they’d started about nonviolence. Others who’d participated in the seminar worked together to build the Institute for Religion at Howard University, where Thurman became Dean of Rankin Chapel. Mays left Howard to lead Morehouse College, and others from this “Rankin Network” went on to teach and lead at Virginia Union, Lincoln University, Shaw University, North Carolina College (now NC Central University), and other HBCUs. But their growing network came back to Howard for regular meetings and stayed in touch through the “Journal of Religious Thought” that William Stuart Nelson, a Yale graduate, edited.

The public theology of this network did not make headlines for the next couple of decades. Most of its adherents didn’t get big book deals or respected teaching posts. Nelson was able to pull essays from the group together in a 1947 volume, The Christian Way in Race Relations, preserving some of their conversation as he made it accessible to more people. But most of the group’s energy was invested in a generations of students who these teachers and preachers believed could change America. They prayed for them, they poured into them, and they believed in them before they believed in themselves.

Before Martin Luther King, Jr., James Farmer, Diane Nash and many others were leaders of the modern civil rights movement, they were students at the HBCU’s shaped by this Rankin Network. There they learned a faith that demanded social action, the philosophy of nonviolence, and the hope that movements could change what seemed immovable. When he was martyred in 1968 after becoming the most recognizable moral leader of the 20^th century America, Dr. King was eulogized by his mentor and college President – one of the handful of people who’d been at that initial seminar in 1931 - Dr. Benjamin Mays.

“Violence was foreign to his nature,” Mays said of King, who’d been gunned down just five days ealier in Memphis, TN. In the aftermath of King’s assassination, American cities were burning. Mays reminded mourners that King had embraced and embodied the militant nonviolent love of Jesus that he and others taught him. Mays told the crowd that King had “warned that continued riots could produce a Fascist state. But let us see to it also that conditions that cause riots can be promptly removed… Let black and white alike search their hearts.” The work of public theology, Mays insisted, is not just the work of leaders like King. It is something each of us must take responsibility for.

We spent a few years reflecting on the story of Mays and King and the 1931 Seminar at Yale before we established our Center for Public Theology and Public Policy here in 2023. From the beginning, we committed to hold a national public theology conference to bring together clergy, scholars, and activists as those seven students had in 1931 – to work alongside our students and colleagues to build a network committed to naming the moral issues of our time and operationalizing the moral force of nonviolence to build a movement for a Third Reconstruction. We convene this gathering in the spring of federal election years to consider, “What are the moral issues of the mideterm elections?” You can see the full program for this year’s conference here.

Our conference this year begins on the one-year anniversary of Our Moral Moment – this Substack, where we’re grateful to be able to connect with you and invite you into the growing network of moral movement builders that this conference convenes. While the in-person interactions that happen over these next three days are essential for movement building, we will be sharing some of the content from our gathering with subscribers here – and also co-publishing some sessions with our friends at Lucid and Redeeming Democracy.

As we celebrate one year of the Our Moral Moment community, we invite you to join us live at 7pm Sunday evening, April 12, for our opening worship service via the Repairers of the Breach livestream. (For anyone close to New Haven, this service is open to the public. We’d love to see you there.)

We’re grateful to be connected with you here at Our Moral Moment. And we’re glad to be building with you a network for the public theology we need now.